The Indian government is facing strong resistance from device makers regarding its plan to mandate the addition of ATSC 3.0 technology, also known as NexGen TV, which allows smartphones to receive | Analyst Neil Shah with Counterpoint said, “In the age of OTT, video on demand and live streaming over the internet, this is a step back when it comes to broadcasting content to mobile."
The government believes mandating ATSC 3.0 in smartphones will help bring down network congestion in wireless networks.
So, over-the-air television uses broadcasting. You broadcast one signal, everyone in the area can receive it. You can have one viewer or a million viewers and it takes the same amount of bandwidth.
But if everyone is streaming video unicast, the way they typically would over the Internet from somewhere like YouTube – which has the benefit of letting people watch whatever they want, whenever they want, independent of anyone else, you can’t do that; you can’t have a million viewers in a cell, or anything approaching that, because bandwidth consumption scales linearly with the number of viewers.
I know that the US emergency alert system uses broadcasting over the cell network, so there has to be at least limited support for broadcasting in the cell network, though. I dunno if cell providers use it for pushing out system updates to phones, but if they don’t, I suspect that they should.
5G multicast-broadcast for group communication: Why it matters and how it works
Through 5G NR multicast-broadcast functionality, 5G networks can now be equipped to support efficient, reliable and scalable group communication services. Below, we explore the 3GPP technologies bringing high-performance connectivity to mission critical use cases.
It sounds like there is some kind of way to do broadcast/multicast within 5G, though.
Interesting. Why do they even want this technology on all phones?
I haven’t been following the issue, but:
So, over-the-air television uses broadcasting. You broadcast one signal, everyone in the area can receive it. You can have one viewer or a million viewers and it takes the same amount of bandwidth.
But if everyone is streaming video unicast, the way they typically would over the Internet from somewhere like YouTube – which has the benefit of letting people watch whatever they want, whenever they want, independent of anyone else, you can’t do that; you can’t have a million viewers in a cell, or anything approaching that, because bandwidth consumption scales linearly with the number of viewers.
I know that the US emergency alert system uses broadcasting over the cell network, so there has to be at least limited support for broadcasting in the cell network, though. I dunno if cell providers use it for pushing out system updates to phones, but if they don’t, I suspect that they should.
googles
https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2022/12/multicast-broadcast-group-communication
It sounds like there is some kind of way to do broadcast/multicast within 5G, though.